Events

Brendan Handley Exhibition
Apr
8
to 18 May

Brendan Handley Exhibition

Brendan’s paintings are a stunning exploration of non-representational abstraction; some conveying a sense of vibrancy, depth and intensity, while others elicit a calmer, more contemplative response. His expressive use of colours and textures evoke different emotions, moods and memories, personal to each viewer.

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Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Past and Present
Apr
8

Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Past and Present

Join Chamber CEO Henrietta Brealey as she discusses Birmingham past and present. including their work with some of Birmingham’s most influential businesses. As well as talking about the Chamber archives, which as team from BMI recently categorised and incorporated in our Library here at the Institute.

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An Intellectual History of Industrialisation: The Scientific Culture of the Birmingham Library, 1779
Mar
25

An Intellectual History of Industrialisation: The Scientific Culture of the Birmingham Library, 1779

Founded in 1779, the Birmingham Library aimed to provide “a treasure of knowledge” and an associational culture that promoted “liberality and friendship among all classes of men”. This paper focuses on how the library’s institution — and development — speaks to the knowledge requirements of Birmingham’s increasingly active intellectual networks.

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Plato's Ideas Concerning Art
Mar
11

Plato's Ideas Concerning Art

In this talk Artist and Curator Maxwell White will discuss Plato's critical view of art as set forth in his book The Republic. Maxwell will offer a counter-challenge to Plato's understanding of the nature of art. The talk is part of a wider enquiry into the problem of the definition of art.

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Mar
8

Study Day - Medieval Drama

Medieval drama charts the gradual secularisation of theatrical activity, moving out of the church into the street. Groups of workers give expression to their faith and demonstrate their craft in the vivid enactment of stories from the Bible. Dramatic episodes will develop into plays with ordinary people as protagonists.

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Conspiracy and constitutionalism: Chartism and trade unionism in the West Midlands
Feb
26

Conspiracy and constitutionalism: Chartism and trade unionism in the West Midlands

This talk looks at the covert and overt strategies used by workers in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century. Trade unionism had emerged against a backdrop of mob violence in the 1750s, and the period in question saw the rise of a popular movement for political representation alongside more covert means of workers' association and workplace control.

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Jan
15

Monday Lunchtime Lecture – “The Norman Conquest and its impact on English Royal Estates.” with Dr Alexander Dymond.

The Norman Conquest had a profound impact upon English government, politics, and society. My doctoral research focuses on the royal estates, investigating how the land of the king (terra regis) and English landed society in general conceptually and materially changed after 1066. Since its formation in the tenth century, the kingdom of England remained a stable and cohesive polity during the central medieval period while socio-political decentralization was occurring elsewhere in western Europe.

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Dec
8

Study Day - Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1864–5)

Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1864–5)

Dickens’ last completed novel shifts from dark anger to warm-hearted expansiveness, raises issues of identity and triumphantly manages its use of ‘a double heroine’ with Lizzie Hexam and Bella Wilfer. Contemporary reaction was mixed but over time the merits and achievements of this rich narrative have been highly praised. Many now consider it to be Dickens’ greatest novel. Sandy Welch’s 1998 BBC adaptation is one of the very best screen adaptations of Dickens’ work.

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Dec
4

Monday Lunchtime Lecture – The Geology of Birmingham and the Black Country – the foundations of the worlds first Industrial powerhouse.

The talk will describe how Mother Nature provided this landscape with one of the richest and most varied treasure chest of minerals over geological time. It will explain how and why these minerals formed here, what scientific treasures that these layers contained and how this natural heritage provided raw materials for some very clever and brave people to create a landscape of invention. It will finish with a discussion of the recent work that secured the UNESCO designation as a Global Geopark for the Black Country on the basis of its world class geology and related biological and cultural heritage.

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Nov
24

Study Day - Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (429 bc)

In recent years we have engaged with writers and directors who have revisited classical texts with a focus on the female characters. Perhaps the triumph of Sophocles’ play lies in Coleridge’s consideration of it as one of three texts with a perfect plot (we have already devoted days to The Alchemist and Tom Jones). Textual analysis will be informed by close attention to the play’s powerful theatricality, supported by the inclusion of extracts from audio and filmed versions of the play.

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Nov
20

Monday Lunchtime Lecture – Henry Reed

The secret life of Birmingham poet Henry Reed. In this talk, archivist Mark Eccleston discusses the life and experiences of the Birmingham-born poet Henry Reed (1912-1986). Research undertaken with Reed’s own papers, held at the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham, sheds light on both Henry Reed’s literary career and also his somewhat turbulent personal life.

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Nov
10

Study Day - J.B. Priestley, The Good Companions (1929) & Eden End (1934)

Priestley achieved fame and fortune with his first novel and yet our current school curriculum positions him firmly as a dramatist. The Good Companions is a joyous and engaging picaresque novel and its success enabled Priestley to turn to writing plays. His texts are both expertly crafted and thought-provoking. He views the family as a microcosm of the world and explores the controlling factor of ‘time’. Eden End (set in 1912 but first performed in 1934) has a layered Chekhovian quality in the elusive search for happiness by characters who are innocently unaware of the imminence of war.

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Nov
6

Monday Lunchtime Lecture – George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda 1876

Since its publication in 1876, George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda has been described as advocating Jewish territorialism over Cosmopolitanism. Some critics deemed the ‘English’ part of the novel as more worthy than the ‘Jewish’ part, yet the work received praise from contemporary Jewish critics. George Eliot wrote of the novel that she ‘meant everything in the book to be related to everything else there’. This talk will consider Daniel Deronda in context with George Eliot’s other novels and her earlier journalism, and in comparison, with representations of Jewish people in histories and novels of the period, and will explore George Eliot’s broader themes of race, inheritance, nationality, duty and vocation.

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